And Who is Behind Tayoush?: the Senior Pundak & Senior Melchior

Following Israel’s “Defensive Shield” operation against PLO strongholds that followed the Passover seder massacre in Netanya last April, Herbert Pundak, former chief editor of the Danish daily newspaper Politiken, and now a columnist for that paper, decided to “do something to activate readers in support of Palestinian Civil Society After Jenin”, in the words of Pundak.

Herbert Pundak, father of Ron Pundak, head of the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, said that he launched the appeal to the Danish public to “to ask readers for money for two purposes… to support the purchase of a new ambulance for the Palestinian Red Crescent (whose honorary president is Fatchi Arafat, the brother of Yassir), and support an organization known as Tayoush (Arabic for “cooperation”) which is supplying equipment and support for Palestinian communities.

Herbert’s son Ron Pundak offered to use the good offices of the Peres Center to facilitate these contributions for Palestinian communities. “Not that this is a Peres Center project”, said the younger Pundak, “since we are only the facilitators of such a worthy effort”, he added.

The former director of the Peres Center, Carmi Gillon, appointed by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as the ambassador to Denmark, raised no objections to efforts to raise funds for Palestinian Arabs that would be facilitated by the same Peres Center.

To establish further credibility for the campaign, Hebert Pundak enlisted the support of the former chief Rabbi of Denmark, Rabbi Bent Melchior, who is the father of the current Israel Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior. After the senior Rabbi Melchior said that his involvement for Tayoush was his own initiative, he was satisfied that his son lent support for his father’s “humanitarian” initiative.

Yet Tayoush is not quite a “humanitarian” initiative. In Jerusalem, Tayoush shares offices with the Alternative Information Center, 6 Shlomtizon HaMalka Street in Jerusalem, acts as the hub of radical left activity in Israel. Tayoush’s own website, located at http://tayoush.tripod.com is clear about its purpose: to help the Palestinians in their struggle, and to expel the Jews from areas taken by Israel in 1967.

Tayoush in action: Claiming that Israeli “settlers” prevent Palestinian children from going to school.

This week, Tayoush issued a leaflet in Arabic, Hebrew and English in which it claimed that Israelis who live in Jewish communities in the Southern Hebron region were preventing Palestinian Arab children from nearby Arab villages from going to school for many months. For that reason, Tayoush announced that it had raised funds to organized a massive convoy to accompany Arab children to school. On the answering machine of Tayoush, in English, Arabic and Hebrew, at 03-6914437, you hear a recorded message to join their convoy on Saturday, October 26th, “which is occuring because of the Israeli settler harrassment of Palestinian children”

Tayoush provided what it had hoped would be credible eyewitness testimony from Arab villagers from the villages of Tuba and Lakia that would attest to their allegation that Israelis were preventing them from going to school.

Their story was different – that the Israeli army, in coordination with Jewish communities in the area, had paved a new footpath for children to go to school which would circumvent the roads and the Jewish communities that are in the area.

565 shooting attacks against Jews had occurred over the past two years in the South Hebron region, which had resulted in the deaths of eight Jewish civilians.

Mahmud Hamamdeh, from the Arab village of Tuba, said that the school children had nothing to do with these armed attacks and that “they would ‘only’ throw stones. After all, they are children, are they not”, he claimed.

Mahmud made it clear that their schools were indeed open, that most of the children were going to school, but that they resented the extra 45 minutes that his children had to walk to school.

Another Palestinian Arab villager referred by Tayoush, Anwar Al Hajuj, from the Arab village of Lakia, said that 21 pupils out of 65 students had dropped out of school because they did not like the walk.

The accounts of Arab villagers were a far cry from the claims of Tayoush website, which was that Israeli settlers were preventing Palestinian school children from going to school for many months.

In other words, Palestinian Arab school children had been inconvenienced in a time of war.

Would Tayoush change its allegations that a severe human rights violation had occurred?

Hardly.

Tayoush spokesman Niv Gordon, reached at his East Jerusalem home, said that “The creation of a special path for Arab children to go to school is Israeli Apartheid”.

Gordon was emphatic that any separate path paved for Palestinian Arabs would mean that Israel had adopted a policy of Apartheid.

Tayoush has invited the media to participate in its motorized procession this Saturday in which Tayoush leaders say that they will escort Palestinian school children to school in order to protect them from the threat of Jewish neighbors whom Tayoush claims will not allow them to get an education.

Will the media buy the story being spun by Tayoush? Time will tell.

(Excerpted from an article in the weekly, Makor Rishon, published on October 25, 2002.)